Sanity
by bauble123
Summary: Post Reichenback unrequited Johnlock and Johnary. John was building up the courage to tell Sherlock how he felt. Now, devastated by the loss of the only person he ever really loved, his sanity is becoming more and more questionable. Will he cope? Recover? Or will he succumb to it and believe in the imaginary Sherlock he sees - or is it even imaginary at all? Questions...
1. One: a revelation

I do not, as a rule, write Johnlock. This is as far as I will go. Unrequited, never admitted, and forgotten in the mmfmmfmmmfmmmf and the mmfmmfmmfmmf (sorry, can't be giving out spoilers, can I?).

Why I wrote this is something I wanted to share. My previous Sherlock fanfics have been ridiculous little one-shots or Johnary fics so fluffy you could stuff several pillows and maybe the entire contents of a duvet factory with them (Seriously. Read One More Miracle if you want to know fluff. I had to add _anti-fluff_.) There are several reasons:

a) **I had a need to write something with an imaginary Sherlock in it.** One More Miracle has basically no Sherlock, and I don't like writing Sherlock, but I put in OMM's summary that it would possibly have an imaginary Sherlock (whom I never added) and I had to take that idea.

b) **I had a ridiculous desire to write a clichéd nurse (or doctor)/patient romance.**

c) **I decided I wanted to make my friends cry with fan fiction. **Mean, I know, but I really wanted to, and I like to be cruel to my characters, be they cannon or otherwise, so sending John insane seemed the obvious choice to my twisted brain.

Sanity

"Any minute now," John thought. He looked over at Sherlock, who lay on the couch, his hands clasped and eyes screwed tightly shut. He smiled. He couldn't help it. It was just part of this…_thing._ He had put it down to post-traumatic stress and what-have-you but that idea was beginning to disintegrate under pressure. What was it? He couldn't put a name to it – not a name he could readily admit to, anyway. There was only one real name for it and that wasn't to be toyed with. He could describe it though: it was…exhilarating, and terrible at the same time. It meant that he smiled every time he saw Sherlock, and that he didn't care about the heads in the fridge or the sugar in the tea. It meant that he didn't notice his hair was being singed on the Bunsen because he was far too busy thinking about the look in Sherlock's eyes when he was experimenting. And it hurt – it hurt like hell. And he wished it wasn't there; it…well, it just _complicated_ things. "Any day now, at least, I'll tell him how I feel." he continued, in the privacy of his own head. So far, Sherlock hadn't gotten around to reading minds, though John was sure that if he engaged himself he could learn.

But how would he explain it to Sherlock? Would he call it what he had thought it was at first – residue of loneliness? No. That was a lie. It was – and a lump grew painful in John's throat as he admitted it, even in thought – love. It was horribly confusing. He thought he had felt love before, but not like this. For one thing (not that it mattered, when you got down to it, but it added to John's perplexity in a large way, because anything other was alien to him) the subject of his feelings had been a woman before, and now it was not only a man but also his best friend. Sherlock's eyes short open.

"Moriarty." he said, simply, and they were off on the hunt again, and the thoughts of admittance were pushed to the back of his mind.

"But any day now," was the thought at the back of his mind. And he meant it this time, really and truly, but disasters come to us all, and tragedies, and this time it was John's turn to bear the guilt and grief of it all.

John hadn't shed a single tear at the sight of the corpse. He had looked ill and haggard, as if he had been dragged twice over through hell, but he hadn't cried. Something – experience, a sense of honour or just plain shock – had stopped him from that. The funeral had been on Friday, and goodness knew enough people had cried then. Sherlock's mother had sobbed fit to burst, soaking an entire pack of tissues; tears had unmistakably been seen at the corners of his father's eyes; Mrs Hudson had wept openly. Mycroft, of course, had remained blank and expressionless, cold and hard as marble; Molly, oddly, hadn't wept either, but rather looked somewhat happy in a weak, wet way; Donovan had been seemingly in shock, her ideas of Sherlock's future having come all too true, and Anderson had let his beard grow untrimmed and looked ridiculous.

John had given his eulogy, stood up at the front, hands only shaking the tiniest bit, voice steady and unchanging. "Sherlock Holmes was, undoubtedly, a great man." he began. "He wasn't exactly what you might call a nice man, and nor was he easy to work with. In fact, a lot of the time, he was downright irritating." (Cue laugh from the members of the congregation who were still sane and not in shock.) "And not everyone saw eye to eye with him." John continued. "But you can't dispute his impact: the lives he saved, the murderers he put in their rightful place, the murders he solved. I can't say fairer than that, and he was a good friend, when you get down to it, which is what really matters. And," John finished, squeezing his eyes shut for a brief moment and hanging his head. "I'll miss him."

Mycroft was, as usual, brusque and curt in his speech. "My little brother Sherlock," he said. "Was apt to waste his talents. He was a hot-head and an idiot most of the time, and utterly stupid next to me, but he had his merits, and things won't be the same." If you looked at Mycroft's face closely at that moment – froze time and really studied it – you would have seen utter blankness, and a total innocence of any knowledge to the contrary of what he had just said. That did not, however, mean that he had been telling the truth, nor that he had nothing to hide. It simply meant that he was Mycroft, and did not betray his secrets to even the closest observer.

Lestrade came to the door of the small flat, reached up and rang the doorbell. It was odd, he mused, to think of John living anywhere other than 221B. He and Sherlock were still, to his mind, permanently situated in Baker street. He waited at the door for a few tense moments. Nothing happened; he rang the bell again: still nothing. He shoved experimentally at the door with his shoulder. It was on the latch, and, with some force, opened. Tentatively, he stepped inside the narrow hallway.

"John?" he called. No reply. Thoughts flitted rapidly though his head. Had John committed suicide? So quickly? God hope not. Was he out, then? Drowning his sorrows? Would he stumble through the doorway in a moment, so drunk he could barely stagger inwards? No, that wasn't really his way, and goodness knew he had had to deal with trauma before; he'd been in the army, for a start. Another solution was needed. Had he been kidnapped? Lestrade checked himself. Whilst all these things were, technically, possible, they were all extremely unlikely. And, this in mind, he set out to find his friend.

He tried first the living room (empty, lights off), then the kitchen (dark and lonely looking) and then finally came upon his quarry in the bedroom. John was lying on the bed, staring at the blank ceiling, mumbling softly to himself. He did not appear to notice Lestrade's entry.

"_Staring at the ceiling in the dark..._" he murmured. "_Same old empty feeling in your heart...'cause love comes slow...but it goes so fast..._" Lestrade thought he knew the words from somewhere; song lyrics, perhaps. John was still dressed in his pyjamas, his hair was a tangled, matted mess and a greyish shadow of stubble showed on his unshaven chin. His eyes were open wide and this gave his face a pleading, imploring look that Lestrade could somehow barely stand. As Lestrade watched, John began to speak to thin air.

"I could almost imagine you were there," he said. "I can piece you together from memory. Only it isn't the same. All I get is a broken, crooked parody of you, like when a jigsaw puzzle gets old and doesn't fit together properly anymore. It's a fine enough image, but it's not you." Lestrade padded over and sat down on the desk chair. John, oblivious, continued.

"God, I miss you. You were my life, you and what you brought all I had to live for, damn you. You had no idea of the power you held." John shook his head and laughed bitterly. "You never acknowledged it. God, you had the best powers of observation and what-have-you in the world and yet there was one thing you never noticed. I didn't notice it at first, either, though. I put it down to human contact and PTSD but that was all just stupid excuses. Nothing but excuses. I was a god damn stupid fool.

"I loved you, Sherlock Holmes. You had all of me. You held my heart - my world, even, and you were so - so - so _careless. _You went ahead and did that silly selfish thing - you erased yourself from the world. But you only erased the physicality, you idiot. You didn't erase the memories. You couldn't erase the pain. Who the hell were you to do that? To toy with someone's heart and life like a toddler playing with the fate of the world?" John was crying now, hot, angry tears streaming down his face. "What gave you the right to shatter my whole f***ing world?!" So saying, John lay down on the bed, face set into the pillow, and fell back to soft sobbing. Slowly, Lestrade stood up. He was aghast at this new revelation, his blanched, paper-white face betraying the turmoil within. He took one last looking at John, lying forlorn on the bed.

"My God," he whispered. "And to think I never had the slightest idea." Then, deciding John needed to be alone, he left.

_"I would say I'm sorry."_

The voice came from nowhere. John groaned and let his face fall back into the pillow with a muffled thump. "I'm even imagining his voice now." he moaned. After a minute, he dragged himself upright and forced himself to get out of bed. Picking up the mug that stood on the bedside table, its bottom brown with coffee residue, he shuffled through to the bathroom.

Therein, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes with grubby fists. He glanced at himself in the mirror, moved on, and did an unexpected double take back to it. He stared morosely at his grim reflection, with its haystack of hair and stubbly beard. "Bloody hell." he said, exhaustedly. Slowly, methodically, he took a razor from the pot on the side, washed it and laid it down. Then, following the well-remembered sequence, he wet his face, took the cap off the bottle of shaving foam, squirted a little into his hands, slapped it onto his chin and cheeks and began about the task of removing the offending stubble.

He was most of the way through when he happened to look up and catch a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror. Only…there was something wrong about it, a flickering shadow in the corner of the glass. He thought, for a mad moment, that he recognised it. The face he saw took a second to register in his brain. Then his hand jerked, and he barely noticed the blood beginning to trickle down his chin; his brain was burning, white-hot with stark shock and terror.

"Sherlock?" he breathed, letting the razor drop with a dull clatter into the sink. He blinked and the madness left him, the preposterous image gone as quickly and imperceptibly as it had appeared. John flung out a hand to the edge of the sink, steadying himself. He raised a shaky hand to his face, and brought it down again, streaked with wet, crimson blood. At this, he pulled himself together, turned on the tap and began to wash his face.


	2. Two: Molly adds to the equation

There was a knock at the door. John hastily finished buttoning up his shirt, grabbed a hairbrush from the side and raked it through his hair as he pelted to the door. He fumbled with the latch, which seemed, oddly, to have been slightly cracked, as if the door had been forced open. Then he pulled the door open to reveal the smiling countenance of Molly Hooper, carrying what appeared to be a large book.

"Hello John," she said, uncharacteristically bright and cheery. "Can I come in?" John struggled briefly with himself. On the one hand, he would have liked to shut out the entire rest of the world, to live as a hermit in the darkness of his flat. But on the other hand, that probably wouldn't be very good for him, and, in the interests of his health, he should really let her in. Human contact was, generally speaking, a better cure for grief than isolation.

So he said, "Oh, um, sure," and opened the door a little further to let her in. Smiling still, she made straight for the kitchen. John followed doubtfully, wondering if he'd made the right decision. As they came into the kitchen, he turned on the light and, having a reasonable sense of propriety, filled up the kettle and put it on.

Having made the tea, he brought it over to the table and set it down, pulling up a chair next to Molly. She ignored the tea and laid the book she had been carrying pointedly on the table. She looked at John.

"I know it's hard," she began. John groaned inwardly; he had just seen the title of the book. It was _Dealing with grief in six easy steps. _He had no doubt as to what was going to happen now. Molly peered seriously at him. "A-are you okay?" Evidently some of his emotion had shown on his face. He forced a weak smile.

"Yes, I'm fine, just a bit tired, that's all."

"Oh, okay. Anyway, like I was saying, I know it's hard for you, after Sherlock…you know."

"Died?" He hated it when people wouldn't say the damn word. They always tried to get round it. They either said 'you know' and nothing really useful, or they used ridiculous clichéd metaphors – he 'passed away' they'd say, or 'he's gone home'. Why couldn't they just say it? He had died. That was the _truth_. Why did they have to dodge it? Humans were just so scared of death. It was like some void, and if they so much as mentioned it, it would swallow them up.

"Well, yes…I suppose you've passed denial…" Molly trailed off, as her neatly ordered, well-starched ideas of how John would be reacting to Sherlock's demise collapsed under the weight of reality.

"You could say that."

"Skip to page ten, then," Molly said, laughing nervously.

"Something like that." John knew he sounded blunt, but he simply could not pull out any more effort from his tarnished soul.

"I brought you this book, anyway. I thought it might, um, help, you know…" she said. John glanced slightly fearfully at the book.

"Yes. Thanks, Molly."

"You're welcome," She was more at ease now; John was conforming. "You must miss him."

"Yeah, I do." John thought about it. Yes, he missed Sherlock. There was no denying it. His mind flooded with memories of Sherlock…and then the memory of the fall. He shuddered and put out a hand automatically to take his tea, a comforting familiarity in this strange new world. His hand shook violently, and brown liquid slopped madly from the mug. John had the horrible feeling that he was about to cry. He blinked it back down. Molly waved a worried hand in front of his face, and prised the mug gently from his hardened grip.

"John? You said you were okay!"

"I am okay!" John's tone was instantly wary and defensive. He pushed himself back in his seat and sat straight upright, devastatingly cold and proper.

"No you're not! Your hand – the tremor – it's back. Have you spoken to somebody?"

"Like who?" John grew bunched up, tense and worried.

"Oh, I don't know," Molly waved a hand vaguely about. "A therapist or someone."

"I'm not crazy!" John protested. "I'm just-" He paused, trying to work out what exactly he was. "A little worked up right now," was what he settled for. "It's only natural." he added.

"Right." Molly said, clearly pretty much ignoring him. She pushed back her chair and stood up. "I'd better go."

* * *

The sign glinted in the dim sunlight that shone through the clouds, an austere deterrent, as good as the hard, cold, forbidding oak door. 'The Diogenes', it read, the letters cut into the gold of the plaque nailed into the pale brick. Steeling herself, Molly put out a hand and twisted the bulky doorknob, letting herself in. The room was full of men, old, old, men, men so old that time and the world had forgotten them, men who preferred the solace of tradition and silence and crisply ironed newspapers to the harshness of a new-age reality.

Molly knew the rules, and she didn't care for them.

Balling her hands into hard, worried fists, she shouted, "Mycroft Holmes!" The men stared up at her in outrage. Their hands shook, their monocles fell from their eyes and the few glass eyes among them wavered worryingly, vibrating to the sound. A few turned a throttled purple, and one began to choke. Molly ignored this, and waited patiently as Mycroft came out from his room, his face blazing with righteous anger, grabbed her forcibly by the arm and manhandled her through his door. Once inside, he shut it, and left her leaning limply against it.

"What," he asked, irritably. "Exactly, did you think you were doing, Miss Hooper?"

"Oh please," she spat. "Call me Molly."

"_Molly_, then." he said, acidly. "What were you thinking though, my dear?" He poured himself a stiff whisky from the elegantly scalloped decanter that stood on the side and downed it in one, no hint of his usual ostentation.

"What the hell were _you _thinking, Mycroft?" she retorted, angrily.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Leaving John like that, you bastard. He's killing himself! You never did see the attachment there, did you? God, Mycroft, I know you don't go in for humanity but John _does_. He's grieving, and it's driving him half insane! His tremor's back, did you know? And he's looking more haggard than I've ever seen him. You and Sherlock… He was back on his feet, and then you stage this coup and look at him now! You've broken it all down."

"Well, I'm sorry, Molly, but there was really no other way."

"What, you couldn't just tell the poor man?"

"_No!_" Mycroft replied, in a tone of caustic indignation.

"Why? Why can't you? Does it amuse you? Is it funny to watch normal people driven mad by your exploits?"

"Calm down, Molly, do. I'd love to tell him, but I couldn't be sure he'd be able to keep it a secret. I'm sorry. I really am." He wasn't.

"Fine." And with that, Molly Hooper was forced to give up.


End file.
